A Brief Account of the Life of the Founder Venerable Master Hsuan Hua“I have had many names,” he once said, “and all of them are false.” In his youth in Manchuria, he was known as “the Filial Son Bai;” as a young monk he was An Tzu (“Peace and Kindness”); later, in Hong Kong, he was Tu Lun (“Wheel of Rescue”); finally, in America, he was Hsuan Hua, which might be translated as “one who proclaims the principles of transformation.” To his thousands of disciples across the world, he was always also “Shr Fu” — “Teacher.”

Born in 1918 into a peasant family in a small village on the Manchurian plain, Master Hua was the youngest of eight children. He attended school for only two and half years, during which he studied the Chinese Classics and committed much of them to memory. As a young teenager, he opened a free school for both children and adults. He also began then one of his lifelong spiritual practices: reverential bowing. Outdoors, in all types of weather, he would make 837 prostrations daily, as a profound gesture of his respect for all that is good and sacred in the universe, beginning with his father and mother.

The Master was nineteen when his mother died. He then respectfully requested the Elder Master Chang Zhi to shave his head so he could leave the home-life. After the Master received the Shramanera (novice monk ) precepts, he observed the traditional three-year period of mourning by sitting in meditation in a hut he built beside his mother’s grave. It was during this time that he made a resolve to go to America to teach the principles of wisdom.

For ten years he devoted himself to study of the Buddhist scriptural tradition and to mastery of the major schools of Mahayana Buddhism, including the Esoteric and Ch’an Schools. He also read and contemplated the scriptures of Christianity, Taoism, and Islam. At the age of thirty, he went to the Fa Yu temple at Pu To mountain and received the ordination of a Buddhist monk. By this time, he had already established through his own experience what he later called the “three great vows” of his ministry in America: the primacy and establishment of the monastic tradition; creating institutions of education; and the translation of the Buddhist sacred texts (Sutras) into English and other languages.

In 1948, Master Hua traveled south to meet the Venerable Hsu Yun, who was then already 109 years old and China’s most distinguished spiritual teacher. Master Hua then left China for Hong Kong. Master Hua received the patriarchal transmission in the Wei Yang Lineage of the Ch’an School From the Venerable Hsu Yun in 1956. He spent a dozen years there, first in seclusion, then later as a teacher at three monasteries, which he founded.

Finally, in 1962, several of his Hong Kong disciples invited him to come to San Francisco. By 1968, Master Hua had established the Buddhist Lecture Hall in a loft in San Francisco’s Chinatown, and there he began giving nightly lectures, in Chinese, to an audience of young Americans. His texts were the major scriptures of the Mahayana. In 1969, five of his early American disciples took full ordination, thereby initiating the Master’s wish to establish an indigenous sangha in the West. Since then, hundreds of monks and nuns have trained, studied, and ordained under his guidance.

In 1984 the Venerable Master Hsuan Hua founded the Dharma Realm Buddhist Association, which serves as the umbrella organization for the monasteries, schools, temples, and all of the activities conducted as part of his legacy.

As an educator, Master Hua was tireless. From 1968 to the mid 1980’s he gave as many as a dozen lectures a week, and he traveled extensively on speaking tours. He continued to travel and lecture until late in life. He also established formal training progrems for monastics and for laity; Instilling Goodness Elementary School, Developing Virtue Secondary School, and Dharma Realm Buddhist University at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas; and the Institute for World Religions, in Berkeley.

Master Hua is no longer with us in body. He entered “stillness” on June 7, 1995.